“I remember when Honza Balabán and Jarda Žil, who are deceased today, came to the exhibition in the Atlantic and began to twist. They didn't like the fact that I had clams, shells, and feathers in the photos. Back then it really didn't fit here. Over time, however, they got used to my work in such a way that the poet Žila presented all my exhibitions and Balabán was preparing to write a big article, which eventually failed to happen. And I got used to their approach again. Over time, I moved from a kind of stubborn nostalgia and poetics to a raw conceptual direction. Nevertheless, I remained faithful to photography.”
“I got fired from everywhere and even from the Elementary Art School. It was the time when Mr Zeman and Mr Klaus shook hands. They created an opposition treaty and suddenly there was no money at all. In the Golden Mountains, the teaching of photography was therefore canceled. At that time, it also seemed to me that I just kept moving in the same circles. I went to the pub, listened to the same talks and laughed at the same thing. One day a telephone rang from my headmaster from the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Ostrava and asked if I wanted to apply for a job. I had nothing to do at the time. I packed my toothbrush and got on my bike. A day ahead I arranged a studio in Přívoz, which is a district in Ostrava and left. The new apartment was covered with dust and the toilet did not flush. I laid down, slept until the morning and stayed here. Since then I say I am in Ostrava, where I never wanted to live.”
“In the end I managed to get to Poland, where punk festivals were held in Jarocin. It was always much better than here. My friend and I often went there. I got to know the Polish nature, but mainly punkers, who made a mess during the day and on Sunday morning always went to the church where they prayed and looked like sheep. But there was also a crazy underground man from the Czech Republic, who got up on stage and screamed that the communists were bitches. I still don't know if he was a provocateur or not. I would say so, because he was goioffending the Bolsheviks in front of a thousand audience right at the stadium. We all later suffered slightly from this on our way back. In Český Těšín they let us get off the train. It looked as if they were waiting for us. My friend and I stood with their passports out at the very end of the queue. A guy looked at us and led us to the next door. There they undressed us in shorts, searched harmoniously and eventually put us in the line again.”
“Then they took me all across the country to Tachov. It was the western circuit and there were quite harsh conditions. We used to eat at traffic lights. I also remember great bullying and notorious regimental commander. All those professional soldiers were big drunks. But we, ordinary soldiers, drank too. What should we have done? Nothing worked there at the time. So we rolled the bottles, or cooked different liquor from alcohol and sugar. Here we watched political team training and things like that. But I was in the warmth of the crew. I had a small office with a radio stitched there. I was receiving strange signals, which I was sending again right away. It was just a game that meant nothing at all. I was even appointed chief of an armoured vehicle that I had actually never seen.”
Jaroslav Malík was born on January 21, 1957 in Jeseník. His life, however, is linked to the city even closer to the Polish border, the Golden Mountains. Thanks to the fascination with the local atmosphere, he settled here even after his return from the war. For more than ten years he worked as a local geological survey officer. He found a number of cameras and darkroom equipment within his father’s heritage. In his lifelong fatalistic philosophy, he saw this moment as a sign and began to devote himself to a new hobby passionately. The primary language for him was composed still life of found objects from all over the region. After the revolution he became a teacher of photography at the local Elementary Art School and one of the first students of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava. The late nineties in the Jesenicko region was marked by a great unemployment, which also affected Jaroslav. After some time, however, he was offered a similar position in Ostrava, where he also moved. Almost immediately he joined the local art community operating around Jan Balabán, Petr Hruška or Jiří Surůvka. He partially adapted his manuscript and thinking about photographic aesthetics to the new location.
